This blog has been underperforming lately. It's time to face the facts. (Update 19/5/05: amateurish attempt at archiving is here.) A combination of several factors is compelling me to call it a day:

Work commitments have been heavy of late and getting heavier. There won't be any improvement in that regard for the foreseeable future.

I've said most of what I wanted to say when I started. It should be clear to any regular or semi-regular reader where I'm coming from, but just in case here's the five-sentence version.

I favour classical values and forms in the arts and literature, and believe that music, especially the great composers of the classical Western tradition, represent what is best in humanity. I favour pluralism and the open society as the best form of politics and government, and find the recent election result thoroughly in conformity with that vision - though one should note that none of the three main parties represented a serious threat to civilisation, as one might have concluded from reading some of the more excitable media outlets. I favour faithfulness to the Atlantic Alliance - the alliance for which VE Day was the first of many causes to celebrate - as the best possible guarantee of security and the spread of freedom. I believe in a merciful and loving God, though I have no wish to lecture anyone on the subject. And like JRR Tolkien, I am always in favour of trees.

The third factor is, I'm getting married.

I hope to return to blogging one day, but I don't know when. Goodbye and all the best for now.

An article I've been wanting to see for a while, because it cuts to the chase about Iraq: will the new Iraqi security forces actually cut the mustard? It looks like they will, though it's a dirty war. 'Among the just, be just, among the filthy, filthy too...' The biggest danger is that they might get too successful, and their leaders might develop political ambitions: still, they need to be given a chance. One fascinating quote:

"Captain Bennett was on his second tour in Iraq... he was among the Third Infantry Division troops who captured Baghdad airport against stiff resistance from Republican Guard forces. Bennett wears his division patch on the shoulder of his uniform, and soon after he arrived in Samarra, the patch was recognized by a few of the Iraqi commandos, who informed him that they had been in the Republican Guard unit at the airport that fought his unit. Initially, Bennett was leery about going into combat with men he had tried to kill, and who had tried to kill him, but after their first battle together, fighting shoulder to shoulder against insurgents, his doubts disappeared."

In the light of all this, I can only endorse this poster from Anthony. There's a few more ticks still to make, and that's a subject I'll be returning to, but three isn't bad going. It's three more than most PMs manage.

...but from a man who meant business. David Adesnik takes us behind the scenes of a democratic transition process. It remakes the point that one can only start to understand anything twenty years after it's happened.

Also from Clive, this interesting post about the prevalence of ex-liberals. Well, I was once liberal enough to go on demonstrations for right-on causes (Jubilee 2000, as was, and I don't really regret it), read a huge amount of frightful guff by and about Gramsci, Althusser, Freire etc. etc. (ah, nostalgia, not) and think that proportional representation was a path to national salvation. So I suppose it was only ever a matter of time before becoming a reactionary monarchist babykiller. 9/11 wasn't a turning point, just a marker along the way, but it might be more than coincidence that it was about then that I stopped thinking of myself as a small-l liberal and started to entertain the previously alarming thought that I might become a small-c conservative.

Via The Glittering Eye, a historical reminder: today is the anniversary of the birth of Ulysses S. Grant, consecutively drunken failure, commander of the Federal armies in the latter stages of the American Civil War, and President. He was extremely good at being a drunken failure, which would normally have disqualified him from any higher post.

War brings odd opportunities, and Grant turned out to have a way to win the war when a succession of apparently smarter men (think McClellan, Hooker) had failed. Grant's life always seemed to me to argue against the logic of the rich man in the parable of the talents: being capable in one job doesn't mean being capable the next rung up the ladder. What is odder, being inept at following doesn't need to mean being hopeless at leading.

Yet another attack-dog performance by Humphrys against poor Jack Straw on Today this morning. Surely it's reached the point of diminishing returns by now? On the news bulletin at 9 an excerpt from the inquisition interview was played in which Humphrys got the last word: in other words the journalist had become the story. He could hardly have been more partisan without wearing a yellow rosette, I'm assuming he doesn't, perhaps it's just that being on radio we can't see it. The problem, for the nth time, is not that he goes after government ministers: the problem is that he wouldn't dream of going after Menzies Campbell remotely as hard. But that theme is one these good people can take up.

The wider problem is that Humphrys plainly has no capability for sympathetic understanding of his ideological opponents. I remember once saying to a political science class that no politician should be trusted who hasn't read and understood and reflected on both Burke - the Reflections, say - and Paine, say the Rights of Man. That was hyperbole, of course. But the point should be obvious enough. Is it true to think that the average politician, the average blogger, and (above all) the average journalist has never done anything of the kind? Or is that unfair? What is clear enough is that people who have done this kind of mental work are invariably better writers than the party-line hacks. (Orwell, inevitably, made the same point long ago.) Look at this, for instance, from SIAW, atheists (and Marxists) to a wo/man, or this.

None of this implies wishy-washiness. It doesn't even imply a centrist or moderate or non-partisan position in politics etc. My touchstone here is the historian Macaulay, who was also an active politician, a very partisan Whig, strongly identified with Protestantism, England and the British Empire (in no particular order). His writings are nonetheless full of generous tributes to the enemies of England, to French soldiers, to decent Tories, to good Roman Catholics, and many others. His History of England is unapologetically pro-Whig and pro-William of Orange: Macaulay unequivocally identifies the Revolution of 1688 as the origin of British greatness. Much of the four volumes is taken up with description and discussion of the villainy and stupidity of the Jacobites, the enemies of the Revolution.

A Jacobite's Epitaph

TO my true king I offer'd free from stainCourage and faith; vain faith, and courage vain.For him I threw lands, honours, wealth, away,And one dear hope, that was more prized than they.For him I languish'd in a foreign clime,Gray-hair'd with sorrow in my manhood's prime;Heard on Lavernia Scargill's whispering trees,And pined by Arno for my lovelier Tees;Beheld each night my home in fever'd sleep,Each morning started from the dream to weep;Till God, who saw me tried too sorely, gaveThe resting-place I ask'd, an early grave.O thou, whom chance leads to this nameless stone,From that proud country which was once mine own,By those white cliffs I never more must see,By that dear language which I spake like thee,Forget all feuds, and shed one English tearO'er English dust. A broken heart lies here.

Tune me back in to Today when Humphrys expresses anything like that level of insight.